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Is blockchain right for your business? Is it a good time to invest in and implement it?

When is the right time
for your business to implement blockchain technology? Is it the right
time to invest your capital in the technology and if yes, then will
your current capacity or core capabilities be able to bear the
overwhelming potential that blockchain has to offer? The Government
of India, in its 2018 budget, has undertaken to explore the use of
blockchain proactively for ushering in a digital economy. To aid the
efforts of the Government, Microsoft has been working over the last
many years with global giants to uncover the potential of blockchain
across banking and finance, retail, cyber security, supply chain
management, IoT, Insurance, cloud storage and many more.

But what is blockchain
exactly?And what capabilities make it so attractive for
enterprises? Blockchain is a disruptive technology trend that
enables a shared, authentic, decentralized ledger that is:

SECURE: Blockchain
uses strong cryptography to create transactions that are impervious
to fraud and establishes a shared truth. Also, all the transactions
are signed with the digital certificate.

SHARED: The real
benefits of blockchain, over conventional technology, are achieved
when we use it to link organizations to share information on a
distributed ledger.

DISTRIBUTED: A
blockchain can be distributed across multiple organizations and
becomes more secure as replicas are added.

LEDGER: Every
transaction is written into the ledger once and cannot be changed
after the fact.

What kind of
businesses is blockchain best for? First and foremost, blockchain
technology is adept for businesses where large amounts of data is
transferred, updated and filtered by multiple users. The potential
scenario to apply blockchain depends largely on that. Once we realize
that there is a situation that requires the capabilities of
blockchain, there arises the need to understand whether a public
blockchain is required or an enterprise blockchain is essential.

But what is an
enterprise blockchain? An enterprise blockchain (i.e.
Hyperlegder, Ethereum Enterprise, Ripple, Quorum, etc.) is a
distributed ledger with the following characteristics:

All the participants, and their
digital identities, are known from one or many trusted organizations

Writes and read permissions are
roles-based and usually requires consensus of several participants

Multiple algorithms are used for
consensus

There are two types of
enterprise blockchain:

Private:
Usually managed by a single organization. Typically, the network
participants are internal business units or divisions.

Consortium:
In this case, the blockchain network is managed by multiple trusted
organizations. New participants require a consensus of several
participants.

Which industries can
use blockchain? The potential impact of blockchain is significant
across all sectors and industries—from banking to government to
healthcare and beyond, as it:

Eliminates
intermediaries increasing efficiency and speed.

Simplifies
operations by reducing cost and time related to reconciliations and
disputes.

Potentially enables
new business models increasing revenue and savings.

According to top market
analysts and leading consulting firms, the top five industries
that blockchain will likely disrupt by 2020 arefinancial
services, government, real estate, supply chain management, and media
distribution. Currently, most Microsoft customers using
blockchain on Azure are financial services institutions, including
insurance companies. However, the trend is rapidly shifting to
other industries.

More interestingly, a
sizeable percentage of blockchain implementations involve at least
one participant from a second industry such as manufacturing,
government or retail. A few customer examples are:

Bank of America and
Microsoft Treasury using Blockchain in a Trade Finance scenario to
improve the process of issuing a Standby Letter of Credit to a
customer (SBLC) to a customer.Impact: The process has been
reduced from 3-5 weeks to just 3-5 days.

Renault Group is
working together with Microsoft and VISEO to create the first
digital car maintenance book based on Blockchain and using Microsoft
Azure capabilities.

Large food
manufacturers and distributors are using blockchain to track their
premium products journey from source to consumption efficiently, and
to have a shared ledger as the single source of truth.

In India, amongst other
strategic partnerships and implementations, Microsoft has partnered
with Primechain whereby Azure Blockchain is the exclusive cloud
platform for BankChain, a blockchain consortium of 30 top banks.
Primechain is creating innovative applications on top of Azure for
near real-time cross-border remittance at near zero cost, real-time
peer-to-peer transfer systems with automated reconciliation,
end-to-end loan syndication process management, vendor onboarding,
NDA processing, and vendor rating and many more. The State Bank of
India, India’s largest bank is using Primechain’s
blockchain-enabled smart contracts and KYC.

Both, in India and
globally, Microsoft is the partner of choice for the financial
services industry, be it for transforming into a modern workplace,
collaborating securely in real-time with first line workers and field
teams, reducing IT costs, improving CRM performance, or technologies
like blockchain.

Looking ahead,
Microsoft is working with customers, partners, and the developer
community to accelerate blockchain’s enterprise readiness.
Microsoft’s mission is to help companies thrive in this new era of
secure multi-party collaboration by delivering open, scalable
platforms and services that any company can use to improve shared
business processes. Its roadmap is based on the following principles:

Blockchain on
your terms: No one-size-fits-all approach — Microsoft’s
platform and ecosystem partners make it easy to get started and
iterate quickly with the blockchain of your choice, both on-premises
and in the cloud.

Integrated with
your business: Merge blockchain with the IT assets you already
have. Azure lets you integrate blockchain with the cloud services
your organization uses to power shared processes.

Microsoft also actively
participates in industry consortiums such as R3,
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance,
and IC3, to understand core
industry scenarios, and to continue learning to meet the needs of
customers. Currently, Microsoft supports the most widely used
blockchain and distributed ledger protocols on Azure, including
HyperLedger Fabric, R3 Corda, Quorum, Chain
Core, and BlockApps.

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